After blockading an event featuring Justin Trudeau and the Italian prime minister, organizers threatened similar actions 'until our demands are met'
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From the beginning, Canada’s anti-Israel movement has been shot through with extremist elements. Organizers such as Palestinian Youth Movement, Toronto4Palestine and Samidoun all openly endorsed the Oct. 7 massacre and called for the violent destruction of Israel, but they initially kept their public actions to street demonstrations and rallies.
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But after nearly six months of meeting little to no police pushback, the activities have grown demonstrably more brazen, with illegal blockades, intimidation and open antisemitism now a regular feature of the movement.
This reached a new plateau over the weekend when an event at the Art Gallery of Ontario featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Italian counterpart was forced to close due to a deliberate blockade of the entrances by demonstrators wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags.
“Tonight was a victory!” declared a Sunday Instagram post by protest organizer Palestinian Youth Movement Toronto. The blockade had been publicly advertised as an “Emergency Action,” with materials referring to Trudeau as “Genocide Justin.”
A post shared by PYM Toronto (@pymtoronto)
Palestinian Youth Movement is the same group who, on Oct. 7, praised Hamas’s indiscriminate massacres in Southern Israel as the “active decolonization of Palestinian land.” They were instrumental in the first wave of celebratory “All Out for Palestine” rallies held in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
Emboldened by the cancellation of the Trudeau/Meloni event, on Sunday PYM Toronto warned of more blockades to come. “We will continue to come out and SHUT IT DOWN until our demands are met,” they wrote.
The post also accused the Art Gallery of Ontario of being “complicit in genocide” by continuing to accept Jewish donations, which they branded as “Zionist funding.”
Trudeau and his cabinet have long had their itineraries deliberately targeted by anti-Israel protests, but Saturday is the first time that law enforcement effectively lost control of the situation.
“The location was not secure. And that was their objective. They don’t want their fellow Canadians to feel safe,” said Toronto-area Liberal MP Marco Mendicino, in a series of social media posts reacting to the cancellation. He referred to the demonstrators as “thugs” and “disgusting antisemitic protesters” who were “screaming, shoving and spitting at seniors.”
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Prior incidents targeting Trudeau have included a Feb. 15 incident in which demonstrators aligned with the Palestinian Youth Movement were able get past Parliamentary security and briefly disrupt a sitting of the House of Commons — an action that was applauded by several members of the NDP caucus.
In mid-November, 100 Vancouver Police officers had to be dispatched to rescue Trudeau from a steakhouse that had its entrances barred by up to 250 anti-Israel demonstrators. In December, a similar-sized crowd attempted to force the cancellation of a Trudeau fundraiser at Vancouver’s Westin Bayshore hotel.
Anti-Israel demonstrations have also taken a noticeable turn towards targeting Jewish sites with no apparent connection to Israel or the war in Gaza.
Just hours after the cancelled Trudeau/Meloni event, anti-Israel protesters massed outside a Thornhill synagogue.
Video posted by protest-watcher Caryma Sa’d shows an anti-Israel demonstrator appear to attempt to strike a police officer. When officers attempt to take the woman into custody, however, they are surrounded by demonstrators shouting, “Let her go.” The officers are overwhelmed and the woman is carried away from police by her comrades.
Protester apprehended moments after allegedly being spat on by pro-Israel counter protester.
She goes limp and police carry her away.
Other protesters intervene to demand her release. They form a barrier around her once she is extricated, chanting:
“Who keeps us safe? We keep… pic.twitter.com/heJowBuo84
Last month, leaders from all major federal parties denounced the “antisemitism” of anti-Israel demonstrators who massed outside Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital — a facility founded by Jewish doctors that still carries a Star of David in its logo.
At the beginning of this year, Toronto’s Avenue Road overpass became subject to a weeks-long blockade by Palesign, a registered non-profit whose actions have included an illegal stoppage of traffic on the Gardiner Expressway, and masked mobs blocking the entrances to a Toronto Zara location owned by a Canadian-Israeli.
The only apparent significance of the Avenue Road overpass was that it is the primary conduit into Canada’s densest Jewish neighbourhood. “Zionism once again fails to break the spirit of Palestinians,” read a post by Palesign after the blockade spurred counter-demonstrations from locals carrying Israeli flags. In a video, one blockader would refer to the overpass as lying within a “Zionist Infested Area.”
Joint statement with @FederationCJA
HAPPENING NOW: An aggressive and physically intimidating mob is surrounding the Jewish community's central building in Cote-des-Neiges. The demonstrators are attempting to block access to the building and are harassing those trying to enter.… pic.twitter.com/WH7IFuE5cI
And just last week, anti-Israel demonstrators on the campus of McGill University would organize a concerted blockade of the Bronfman Building. The building is materially no different than any of the others on campus, save for the fact that it bears the name of Jewish philanthropist Samuel Bronfman.
Organizers included Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill, another group whose reaction to the Oct. 7 massacres was open jubilation.
McGill — like most universities in Canada — has featured no shortage of demonstrations calling for “intifada” or employing slogans calling for Israel’s complete destruction. But the Bronfman blockade would prompt a special reaction from administrators, who asserted that this action was “different.”
“Our university cannot successfully operate with unpredicted interruptions that disrupt our activities,” McGill University president Deep Saini would write in a letter to McGill students.
Although Saini’s letter did not call out the protesters’ targeting of a Jewish-named building, he did reject their demand that McGill “unilaterally sever its research and academic ties with Israeli institutions.”
I used to think of these as black and white images telling a story of my grandparents that I thought was a horror in the past. To see this appearing in colour today on the streets of Toronto - the city where I was born and raised - shakes me to my core. pic.twitter.com/BlyjeLYXQm
Just after Canadians were handed a ream of documents detailing the sheer extent of the security breach at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, a coalition of Liberal and NDP MPs have voted down a proposal to immediately do anything about it. On Monday before an emergency session of the House of Commons ethics committee, Conservative MP Michael Chong proposed conducting an immediate probe into the documents’ revelations. But Liberal representatives – along with the NDP’s Matthew Green – shut down the proposal on the grounds that it wasn’t their mandate, that it wasn’t “urgent” and that it was “unfair” to propose this during a week on which the House of Commons is supposed to be on break.
With Brian Mulroney gone, the National Post tallied up all the ex-prime ministers that Canada has left. It turns out there are six of them, which means that roughly one quarter of the 23 people who have ever led Canada are still alive. Arguably the most interesting political afterlife belongs to Kim Campbell. Immediately after her crushing defeat in 1993, she married an accomplished Montreal playwright 21 years her junior, and has since lived everywhere from Edmonton to Paris to Los Angeles to Boston.
A recent feature in the Canadian military magazine Esprit de Corps argued that the Canadian Armed Forces are “in even worse shape than you may think.” Their gist was that even if the military had proper equipment (it doesn’t), there wouldn’t be anybody to use it. As recently as 1989, the Canadian Armed Forces had 88,000 regular troops. Now, with a population that’s larger by 14 million, “we are hovering around the 60,000 mark,” the article reads. With all that in mind, the signature announcement of the Defence Minister this week is that the Edmonton home of the Third Canadian Division will be getting energy-efficient upgrades including LED lighting and “high efficiency water fixtures.”
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